Cartooning off to a slow start

Okay, I admit it… I got a little over ambitious with blogging. I now have four blogs: this one, one for cartoons, one for plug-in cars, and one for software project management. That’s too much for someone who can’t even find time to clean off his desk, so I for the time being, I cut it down to one for software project management and this one for everything else.

This post is for the cartooning process. My wife is out of town with our camera so I can’t post any of my cartoons until she gets back. That is, if I had drawn any cartoons, but the lack of camera is a good excuse. In the mean time, I can share some of what I found about techniques and materials.

I read Mark Parisi’s page about materials and this is what he uses:
2H pencil for sketching
Technical pens from .3 – .7 for inking
Bristol board
Single panel cartoon size: 5″ x 6″

Mark’s a successful cartoonist and that sounds logical, so those are the materials I’ll use to start off. I did some time as a draftsman back in the early 90s and had some technical pens back then. I’m not sure what happened to them, though. I’ll have to check some boxes in the basement. Chances are I’ll need to buy some new ones.

Now that I know what materials I need, here comes the hard part: what to draw. I drew single panel political cartoons back in my college days. I may do some of those again, but there are so many talented political cartoonists, I doubt I could compete. And I guess, that’s not really where my heart is.

So I think I just draw cartoons about life. Most cartoonists say to draw about what you know. What do I know? I know what it’s like to develop software in a large corporation. I did that for about ten years, so some of my cartoons may be in the mode of Dilbert. Then there’s my dog, Molly. She’s always getting into some kind of trouble. There are characters I’ve known — friends, relatives, neighbors… There’s Buddhists and new agey people.

So, I’m ready. I’m going to draw a cartoon. Right after my nap. Or maybe I’ll read some more blogs first. Damn, it’s hard to get started.

Explore posts in the same categories: Life, cartoons

Tags: cartoons, Life, work

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